Don Macpherson: The government’s moral authority has been weakened

It’s dismaying to know that defending democracy in its losing battle in Quebec against mob rule – for a gathering that cheerfully defies a law to take over a city’s downtown is merely a cheerful mob – puts you on the side of a bad government.

The constitution disagrees with the dangerously irresponsible suggestion by the leaders of the opposition parties in the National Assembly that the government has lost its “legitimacy.”

Although it remains the democratically elected government, however, even a circumstantial ally must admit that it’s not much of a government to be managing the current crisis in Quebec.

Led by a stumblebum premier who has recently shown signs of fatigue, it is the most politically inept government Quebec has had since 1970.

The emergency legislation it adopted three months into the crisis appears to have been hastily improvised, undergoing several amendments even while it was being rushed overnight through the Assembly.

Its limitations on freedom to demonstrate seemed useless when police were reluctant to enforce them on Tuesday in Montreal. If police do test them, they might prove to be unconstitutional.

Not only is the government politically incompetent; its moral authority to deal with the crisis has been weakened by suspicion that it has been corrupted by the influence of contributors to the governing Liberal Party.

Against such an unpopular government, it seems, the ends justify the means, and all means are justified, especially to the government’s sovereignist adversaries.

The government’s ethical laxity was recently illustrated in the context of the current crisis by the replacement of the government’s chief spokesperson in the tuition dispute, the education minister.

That is, Line Beauchamp, who had breakfasted with an alleged Mafioso at a Liberal fundraising event, was replaced by Michelle Courchesne, who had favoured Liberal contributors with lucrative daycare permits in a process involving “considerable subjectivity.”

That last phrase was written in a report by Renaud Lachance, just before he resigned as the province’s auditor-general.

Coincidentally, while students and their supporters were beginning to gather in Montreal on Tuesday, Lachance took his place as a member of the Charbonneau commission at the opening of its public hearings into the construction industry.

He listened as the commission chair, Superior Court Judge France Charbonneau, described the inquiry’s mandate and how its hearings will be conducted.

The mandate includes possible connections between public-works contracts and political contributions.

Premier Jean Charest committed a blunder that could prove politically fatal by stonewalling until the last two years of his government’s term in office before calling a public inquiry.

As a result, the hearings could extend through the next election, which Charest must call by the end of 2013.

The hearings would not be suspended if an election is called but would continue through the campaign, the commission’s chief counsel, Sylvain Lussier, said on TVA’s Larocque Lapierre program on Sunday.

So until the next election, the hearings will keep attention focused on an issue that has already weakened the government’s moral authority, while constantly threatening the Liberals with the possibility of damaging new disclosures.

dmacpherson@montrealgazette.com

Twitter:@MacphersonGaz

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